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"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

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Topic: Money (Read 5475 times)

If You've Never Lived in Poverty, Stop Telling Poor People What They Should Do

Saturday, September 09, 2017

By Hanna Brooks Olsen, Everyday Feminism | Op-Ed

SNIPPET:

In the US, we have become so accepting of the fact that poverty is not a symptom of a grossly unequal economy, or the result of numerous systemic failures, or the product of years of trickle-down economics, but instead, that the only thing standing between a poor person and the life of their dreams is their own decisions, their own choices, and their own failures.

This is why I would advise any person whose immediate reaction upon hearing about a friend, relative, or stranger on the Internet who is living in poverty is to offer unsolicited advice to hold their tongue (or fingers), at least long enough to consider what other forces contribute to poverty and how their "help" may actually be insulting, incorrect, and downright damaging.

Several government agencies and at least 34 state attorneys general have opened investigations into the Equifax data-breach scandal--which is 'the gift that keeps on giving,' says white-collar criminologist Bill Black

Tonight we look at the Republicans' new tax plan -- why it's a big giveaway fro the rich, how it will hurt the poor and middle class, and how it could threaten Social Security and Medicare by driving up the deficit. We also talk about what is happening in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.The Trump administration is failing badly at helping the people of Puerto Rico who, lest they forget, are citizens of America. Last, we examine the constitutional provision that outlines a president's duty to fully preserve and execute the law.

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Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

Puerto Rico is not large enough to stand alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interest of its own people.

–Theodore Roosevelt

Puerto Rico is dying.

Let those words sink in.

Three and a half million people are without power, water, fuel, food, and support. This isn’t some uninhabited atoll. This is where I grew up. This is where my family lives. This is my home.

And my home is dying.

I have been desperately trying to come up with the right words to express what I feel and what I think for the better part of a day. My social media has as of late provided me with a space to write my remarks, observations, and more often than not, rants about the situation on Puerto Rico. I shared my anxieties when hours, then days passed without a word from my family. I cried in silent sobs at the pictures that slowly started to come out of the island. Despair began to unite the large Puerto Rican diaspora as we comforted each other, and waited as the absolute silence became more and more unbearable.

“Have you heard from…”

“Does anyone have any information about my hometown…”

“My mom, she’s not well, I can’t reach her…”

“I can’t find my partner…”

It was only last Friday when I had proof of life from my family in my hometown of Arecibo. And it was on Sunday that I was finally able to speak to them over the phone. Speak… more like share moments of absolute joy and tears of happiness. Of feeling born again. And with that memory fresh in my mind, I sat down to write.

Nothing came except tears. I’m crying as I write this.

How can one put into words how it feels to be completely powerless as the world I’ve always known slowly turns into Hell for those that I love the most? How can one fully express in words that could convey, in any way, the overwhelming sense of constant pain, of horrible uncertainty, the fear of loss, and the fury over what is, in the end, an unnatural disaster? And how can I live with myself for not being there?

How can I explain to people that Puerto Rico, my home, my island, my heart and soul, is dying?

The fear of death is an eternal companion in these situations. So as my country slowly agonizes, would it be appropriate for me to write a eulogy for its seemingly inevitable death? Perhaps some choice words as a send-off to the oldest colony in the world? As Donald Trump, the biggest psychopath to occupy the Oval Office so far, finally relents to growing public pressure and announces that federal funds will be made available in full to Puerto Rico, and as more aid slowly makes its way to the island, could I dare hope for a stay of its execution? Or is this just another delay in its pre-ordained death-by-empire?

President Trump’s message to Puerto Rico was clear: pay up and drop dead. The island is expected to pay its imaginary debt for the dubious “privilege” of being an imperial colony in the way it’s always done so: in blood. Wall Street’s interests have priority over securing the very survival of nearly four million people. God forbid that millionaire Wall Street bondholders suffer the horror of payment forfeiture over a minor inconvenience like Hurricane María, only the worst storm in eighty years!

The president initially denied full federal assistance to the island and refused to suspend the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or Jones Act, that has for nearly a century strangled commerce to and from Puerto Rico. Because of this stubbornness an obviously colonial World War One-vintage piece of legal protectionism continues to choke the island as its inhabitants are left to fend for themselves. Colonialism is a self-perpetuating state of exception that thrives on crises precisely because the beneficiaries are always the colonizers and their local flunkies who maintain and benefit from the illusion of “self-governance.”

While Homeland Security steadfastly holds on to its refusal to wave the Jones Act, Herr Trump was later forced by public pressure to amend his remarks on aid, and the USNS Comfort hospital ship is now scheduled to arrive on the island in three to five days (as will our bloviating commander-in-chief himself at some point) any help received from the American imperial mainland now carries with it a stigma, a sense of being a discarded, second-hand lifeline. This is extremely revealing. It’s been over a week since Hurricane María cut a path of destruction in Puerto Rico nearly beyond the scope of living memory, a week that passed before Trump made any remarks at all. It was a week filled by hysterics over kneeling, Russia and North Korea, a week of forgetting that Puerto Rico even existed.

American colonialism is not just confined to its territories or its Native American population. A successful empire can choose to either exalt itself to its population, thereby becoming an object of national pride, or hide itself by dulling that population’s senses and intelligence, negating that it has an empire in the first place. The United States pursued the second path. Successfully, I might add. Puerto Rico’s imperial masters also relied on their own profoundly ignorant population on the mainland that, fueled by the systemic racism on which the United States is built on, and a blinding allegiance to patriotism, considered Puerto Ricans to be just another group of Hispanic vermin. To this day nearly half of Americans do not even know that Puerto Ricans are “fellow citizens”, at least in name. And make no mistake. The white supremacist regime that attacks NFL players and Black Lives Matter activists for having the nerve to protest is the same regime that established the fiscal control board, the biggest killer in Hurricane María’s wake. These things are directly related, and the fiscal control board’s austerity measures ensured that it has blood on its hands.

The United States has perfected its colonialism on the island of Puerto Rico to such a degree that when it decided to take away the island’s limited self-rule, the vaunted “commonwealth”, and instead installed a fiscal control board, it did so with the applause of many islanders. Many Puerto Ricans, conditioned by school, church, political party, and kin to accept their inferiority to the gringo as natural law, felt unfit to govern themselves. We so desired to be our masters that we welcomed punishment for engineered transgressions tailor-made by vulture capitalists in the metropole and on the island itself.

And then came María. The other killer phenomenon to approximate María’s devastation and raw power was Hurricane San Felipe II, in 1928. Yet María’s devastation attacked an island that, in many ways, was in worse shape than the relatively pre-industrial Puerto Rico of the 1920’s. Hurricane San Felipe was nature’s killer. Hurricane María, however, has only exposed colonialism’s murderous true self. There is nothing natural about this killer.

María found the perfect target: an island whose infrastructure was crippled by decades of colonial neglect, the product of an idled and corrupt political class that blindly follows orders from Wall Street and Washington. These quisling parasites, like the island’s cravenly telegenic current governor Ricardo Rosselló, coasted to power on the artificiality of petty political partisanship fostered by the main political parties on the people for decades in order to divide and lord over a population lulled by consumerism, Christian conservatism, and Cold War-era paranoia.

Now that same political apparatus has fallen apart. Long lines await supplies and fuel that are not being delivered. Two deaths were reported at an ICU when its generator failed, drained bone-dry as its diesel fuel never arrived. Governor Rosselló has been busy with a nonstop photo op tour since the hurricane passed. His Facebook page and Twitter account are filled with photos of his smiling face. But it is all smoke and mirrors. More and more mayors are voicing their rage at the lack of supplies. Whole shipments of supplies and fuel await distribution.

The situation has laid bare the reality that there was never a plan put into place. It has also revealed that FEMA has utterly failed in its role. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, acting in every way much more responsibly than our delusional governor, has denounced that FEMA has done the impossible to tie up any aid effort with red tape, asking for interminable memos and paralyzing aid distribution. It is quite telling that at one point in an interview journalist David Begnaud, who’s done a commendable job covering Puerto Rico, briefly mistakenly calls Mayor Yulín “governor”. Deep down, though, I’m sure that when he caught his slip and corrected himself he wished that his momentary lapse would have indeed been fact.

This official paralysis and complete disregard for reality often leaves first responders and National Guardsmen mobilized to help with distribution literally empty-handed. And this crass stupidity is not limited to help on the national level. Cuba has offered help in the form of doctors and a brigade of electrical workers to help shore up and rebuild the island’s ravaged infrastructure. Cuba! Yet cruelly, but predictably, the American government denied them entry on political grounds.

FEMA’s (in)actions border on being criminally negligent, even going as far as kicking roughly 400 refugees out of the San Juan Convention Center in order to conveniently take it over as their center of operations alongside the Puerto Rican central government. Federal and local agencies have become shining examples of feckless inaction, fetid bureaucracy, and unfettered bullshit. In typical Trumpist fashion, FEMA’s response has been to accuse the media of biased reporting, but the true bias is self-evident.

Puerto Rico is dying, yes. It is a victim of the stupidity of its political class and the racist vindictiveness of its colonial masters. Colonialism will always be a humanitarian crisis.

But Puerto Rico isn’t dead yet.

In fact, something seems to be happening. The lack of governmental aid, the realization that American aid is essentially a fantasy, the uncalled-for curfew that’s tailor made to pacify anxious shareholders stateside and not help the citizenry, and the need to rediscover communal bonds of mutual aid have done something to Puerto Ricans. I confess to standing in awe of the newly found resilience, the furious indignation turned into action, and the unbreakable bonds of basic humanity that have returned with a vengeance. And with it comes a growing sense of indignation, of anger towards our colonial masters. Anger, blessed anger, the engine of political and social change par excellence.

Puerto Rico is dying, but if it survives this and rises once again, it may do so inoculated from the diseased colonial mentality that has crushed its collective spirit for so long. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth thinking about now more than ever. This national tragedy has made Boricuas remember that they can, in fact, do things on their own together. That the often-remarked bravery of Puerto Ricans that many feared lost by colonialism’s savage indoctrination (I confess to being amongst those that felt this way) was always there. That fury and indignation lead to freedom. Like many fellow Puerto Ricans that live in exile, we have come forward to join that life-and-death struggle for our homeland, and we do so together, always loyal.

As the white imperialist invader revels in his pettiness and apathy it becomes clear that the Puerto Rican people must resist and fight back in the best way possible: by surviving and thriving together. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll rid Puerto Rico of the American flag’s stagnating shadow over our island and reduce it to a simple funerary shroud wrapped around the corpse of American colonialism, breaking away from that dying empire once and for all.

Miguel A. Cruz-Díaz is a fifth-year graduate student and doctoral candidate in British and world history at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he specializes in anarchist history. A native son of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, he currently resides in Bloomington. He has published in CounterPunch and in the Spanish-language publication Revista Cruce.

Miguel A. Cruz-Díaz is right. Puerto Rico is dying because it has been slowly murdered. What Wall Street has done to Puerto Rico SINCE THE JONES ACT about a CENTURY ago is to deplete its economic immune system so it would reach a point when a hard blow from a storm or some other cause would enable the predatory capitalists to create a private fiefdom with a slave population.

As a Puerto Rican, I have this to say to those fine white 1% "humans" who plan to "rake it in TOTALLY" now and become "Lords over all those salt water niggers down there".

Bring a sandwich.

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Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

Economist Bill Black says that both Republicans and Democrats are financially illiterate when they speak about the deficit, and Trump's economic experts are 'completely disconnected from the real world'

... think even more than the tourist ads, what makes it difficult for Americans to connect is the deep ignorance that exists about the political relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Most folks in the US don't even know how to orient themselves towards Puerto Rico. How should they feel about it? Should they support statehood, should they support independence? They're unable to reconcile the political history of Puerto Rico with the history that they are taught in schools about the United States.

On top of the devastating impact of recent hurricanes and an ongoing debt crisis, Puerto Rico's Medicaid funding will run out as early as the end of the year unless Congress acts explains CEPR's Mark Weisbrot.

Tesla’s Musk helped green nearly the entire energy supply of American Samoa, as well as much of Hawaii’s island of Kauai. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are far larger. But advanced collectors and battery storage systems, along with a new generation of wind turbines, are poised to quickly replace the islands’ rickety, obsolete energy supply system with a green network of storm-proof micro-grids—and a showcase for global change.

The Caribbean is also fertile ground for biofuels to power the region’s automobiles. Brazil runs a very large portion of its vehicular fleet by turning bagasse, a byproduct of growing sugar, into an alcohol-based fuel that’s far cheaper and more efficient than imported gasoline.

And the islands could use a massive influx of LED lights, along with other energy-efficient technologies to streamline demand.

But micro-gridding will be key. The islands are mountainous, with many remote villages. Most could be made self-sufficient quickly with local networks powered by rooftop panels, small wind arrays and homegrown biofuels.

While quite certain this genius has overextended his corporation Tesla, aptly named I might add, financially. Who can deny this wizard's contributions?

I have a very negative outlook on Tesla's future as a company.

Also quite fearful that if it crashes in price this amazing person's reputation will be tarnished by the pigs of Wall Street who only know how to measure success by money.

GO disclosure: I have a small short position in Tesla via a put option and it is the only time in my life I am wishing to lose the bet.

I understand your position. I undersatnd your logic in taking that short position. Nevertheless, I recommend that you cover ASAP.

A discussion of Tesla short selling was entered into by some posters at Cleantechnica. The arguments made on behalf of shorting Tesla were more a defense of shorting itself (i.e. they defended GREED BASED IDEOLOGY and pretended morality is 'irrelevant') as a "valid" form of making money on the stock market than as what it actually is (i.e a herd following the Zerohedge/Seeking Alpha Teslahater crowd).

Yes, GO, they talked about the "lack of fundamentals" in the Tesla balance sheet that would 'merit' a view toward the company finally becoming profitable after all these years of 'unproftability'.

So what is wrong with their hope of making lots of money by shorting Tesla?

The FACT that Musk published his game plan over a decade ago and has stuck to it, all the way, except when a part of his game plan was accelerated. He has NOT been sidetracked. But the shorters could only bring up comments like "Tesla is not Amazon or Apple" and so on.

The only way that Tesla can go down is if Trump and Pruitt and the rest of the fossil fuel TOOLS in that sad excuse for a government find a way to make the sale of EVs illegal in most states because they, uh, 'pollute the environment'.

Yes, GO, I admit that skullduggery is possible. But I think the probabilty is too low to justify shorting Tesla at this time. I hope you make the right decision. As you know, I do not buy, sell or short stocks.

The fellow with the handle "Dan" is particularly knowlegedable. I am on the same page as he is. You are probably on the same page as Joseph Dubeau is. He says, "... Greed has the ability to turn many of blind eyes from the truth". I vigorously disagree.

Here are some comments and the article link:

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alexays • 4 days ago Whilst most agree the Model S is a great car and the Model X is also appealing, the fact is that Tesla has never made an annual profit and survives only through repeated capital raises through share dilutions and junk bond issuance. The Model 3 doesn't quite have the cachet of the S and X and the dashboard leaves a lot to be desired. If this flops, then the company will have trouble paying its debts and may end up in chapter 11. The only thing more dangerous being short with this stock is being long.

agelbert alexays • 4 days ago The nuclear power industry has, for the last 60 years, been continously unprofitable. The only reason it has been able to "declare profits" to the shareholders of the electric power companies that own these nuclear white elephants is because of massive government subsidies AND periodic, totally unjustified, bail outs.

As for Tesla, the "subsidy" money they have gotten has been a tiny pittance compared to the massive subsidies the internal combustion engine powered car manufaturers are getting which are both visible and invisible because the fossil fuel bribe team "lobbyists" go out of their way to see that they are "profitable".

In both cases, we-the-people are being coerced to support massive polluting economic travesties that YOU seem to think are "going concerns". They are not. They are dead men walking.

The only thing more dangerous than being short with Tesla stock is being long with nuclear power company or ANY internal combustion engine powered automobile manufacturer stock.

Tesla is the leader that others with good economic sense are following. It's over for the internal combustion engine. Your focus on Tesla balance sheets is not objective simply because you do not understand the fragility of the internal combustion polluting titanic which is inexorably sinking, despite all the efforts of the "business as usual" Wall Street crowd.

The only logical basis you have to be concerned with Tesla is the fact that Trump will do whatever he can to prevent EVs from dominating. Trump and all the other bought and paid for tools of the fossil fuel industry will fail, despite the fact they are attempting a repeat of the successfull Big Oil orchestrated strangulation of all things Renewable Energy powered in the 1980's.

The EV is here to stay AND dominate. Whether Tesla becomes the leader in EV sales or is outsold by a Chinese (BYD) or Japanese NISSAN) or Indian (TATA) EV manufacture is the only question you should concern yourself with if you plan to short Tesla.

Technom3 alexays • 4 days agoAgreed. Also if the model 3 has the same amount of problems the x had... The market won't forget him. There are too many fanbois who can finally afford the car... And they have a loud megaphone and are temperamental. If the car is great they will sing praise. If it's unreliable or poor quality etc... I don't think Tesla will be able to recover from it as they trade too much on these people selling their blue sky valuation. The model 3 is going to be mean everything for this company. If it fails... Tesla likely will as well.

Also this company hasn't turned a profit with virtually 100% market share. Good luck with Porsche entering the market.... Ohh and Mercedes. Ohh and BMW... Ohh and by the way... These people all have dealerships... You know... Places to actually get the cars serviced at...

agelbert Technom3 • 4 days ago The following graphic describes you and the entire Tesla/EV hater crowd at Zerohedge within a single year (the one after that is me):

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D800-fan • 4 days agoThere are many, many people on Wall St that are making a healthy living by shorting. It is not just Tesla that gets heavily shorted. There are other tech stocks that are considered legit targets by Wall St. These include Apple. Wall St marks down APPL and TSLA because they don't play the Wall St 'lick my boots game'. Once you understand that then it all makes perfect sense.Now, I'm from the UK so how do I know this? I spent a whole transatlantic flight sitting next to a shorter. We was slightly drunk as he'd made over $250K with a series of shorts the previous week.

Shorting is a real growth industry.

Quote

Dan D800-fan • 4 days agoShorting is a game. Saddly these days we let gamblers play with a lot of money in the stock market. It isn't investing it is just gambling and the reality is this type of situation only hurts the working class trying to make an honest living working for the companies these gamblers crash just to make a quick buck. One more example of how the rich have turned our economy into nothing more then a game they play where the winner gets more personal wealth with no regard for the real word cost to society. The entire thing makes me sick.

Agelbert Dan Exactly right. One of the greatest examples of how we-the-people have been defrauded by the despicable "greed is good" corporate mentality is the nauseatingly repetitous claim by those who claim monetary profit (over people, planet and anything else in the way), is not only "justified", but "demanded" of anyone in the business of managing money. This willful disdain of morallity in business has been exposed as a fraud. No corporate charter can claim that profit is "IT" above all other concerns simply because ALL corporate charters are subject to each and every law created for the public welfare.

But that doesn't stop Wall Street from making up this profit over people and planet craven stupidity up as they go along. Somebody needs to stamp the following on the foreheads of those planet eaters.

Quote

Joseph Brown Dan • 4 days agoI don't think you understand what holding a short position really means, or what effects it has on the market. Shorting is perfectly valid, and a way to provide both liquidity and stability to a market. That said, there are times to short, and times not to short -- and I think the Tesla Bears have called this one dead wrong.

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Dan Joseph Brown • 4 days ago" Shorting is perfectly valid, and a way to provide both liquidity and stability to a market"

I expecially like how shorting is by your definition is key to enduring, lasting, permanent. I alway thought short term and permanent where opposites.

Agelbert Dan • 4 days agoWell said. The standard erudite sounding baloney that Wall Streeters spew is that "shorting is valid because it provides liquidity".

That was a half truth at best prior to high speed trading algorithms. Now with the trading desks of the 6 "big boy" banks running their high speed algorithm fun and fraud games representing over 70% of all trades per day, shorting is a joke.

But it gets better. Much (almost ALL) of the money "loaned" to these "banks" (you know, the ones that prefer stock gambling to serving customers now) by the "Federal" Reserve is at NEGATIVE interest rates! So, we-the-people get to provide, at interest the "Federal" Reserve ends up charging us so the "banks" get paid (i.e. negative interest) to fix/game/cheat/defraud "invest profitably" in the mahket.

And THAT is what is providing all that "healthy income" to those that engage in this "valid" money making activity.

RI-I-I-I-IGHT.....

Below please find, a spokesman for all that activity to help the "economy".

Here's another picture of a trio of them without the sheep covering:

Message to the PARASITES on Wall Street that think they are engaging in "valid" activity on behalf of the "economy":

There Is An Epic Battle Happening Between Musk & The Tesla HatersOctober 8th, 2017 by Matt Pressman